Telstra has revealed the addition of almost one million new mobile services in the six months to December 2011, but Sensis revenues plummeted 24 percent in 12 months.
To me, this is just fanciful thinking. Gadgets like the Eee PC appeal to select types - sysadmins, hackers and the curious, to name three. They cost as much as an ordinary PC running Windows.
Why would a middle-aged or elderly person opt for a 7" screen (as in the Eee PC) in preference to a normal monitor? Are small businesses going to buy large numbers of these gadgets in preference to ordinary desktop PCs? That's just wishful thinking.
Take it from me, the percentage of Linux desktops will rise significantly only when businesses begin to realise that they can save money and time by deploying the operating system in areas where no fancy functionality is needed.
But even if this realisation dawns, such businesses will need to have the balls to go the Linux route. If they have anything at all to do with Microsoft, then the chances of going that route are zero.
There's a rider here: this kind of switch will happen only when PC resellers have well-trained technical staff who can customise a Linux distribution to meet the needs of a specific business. The type of half-arsed efforts that we've seen so far just won't cut it.
Microsoft isn't exactly unaware of the possibility that common sense could become a bit more common among people who use PCs - to the extent that it is willing to give away free copies of its XP or Vista operating system provided one participates in what it calls a feedback programme. That's another word for snooping but when something is labelled "free" you know how people will fall over each other to grab it.
Linux on the desktop? For me, the year of the Linux desktop was 2000 when I switched over. It may be a different year for you. The kind of fanciful situation which you have probably already read about - and are likely to read about much more in the coming weeks and months - is as likely to eventuate as the arrival of Godot .
David Bass
| For the fourth year in a row, IDC has placed content security provider Websense (NASDAQ: WBSN) at the top of the IDC Worldwide Web Security 2011 –…
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